The present invention relates generally to methods and apparatuses for electronically trading and investing in securities or other assets, rights or liabilities, such as commodities or futures. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for electronically trading, including over the Internet, and investing in securities or other assets, rights or liabilities that enables a user, at a reasonable cost, to create and manage a complex portfolio of such securities or other assets, rights or liabilities.
Currently, small investors generally have two choices with regard to making investments in securities. First, they can purchase shares directly and one security issue at a time (for example, buy 1000 shares of Microsoft or an option on Microsoft stock). In this instance of direct purchases (through “brokerage”), the investor is the actual owner of the particular security. Second, these investors can purchase an interest in an instrument (which could itself be a security), trust, corporation or other business vehicle that derives its value from multiple other securities (such as an option on the Dow Jones Industrials or a trust that contains a portfolio of stocks). This second category of intermediary or derivative products is principally comprised of open-end mutual funds (such as the Fidelity, Vanguard, Scudder and other mutual funds) that invest in other securities, and is referred to collectively herein as “funds.” In this second case where the investing is done through an intermediary vehicle, the investor owns an interest in the vehicle. That vehicle in turn either owns the underlying securities (like a mutual fund) or simply reflects a value derived from the value of those securities (like an option on the Dow Jones Industrials). Where the investor owns a derivative security, the investor has no interest in the underlying securities (which determine the value of the derivative). Each of these two investment strategies—either trading through brokerage or investing in funds—has disadvantages for the investor, which are described below.
A. Chief Among the Structural Disadvantages Inherent in the Fund Product are:
1. Inability to Select Securities or Monitor Selection of Securities
An investor in a fund is precluded from selecting the individual securities to be included in, or excluded from, the fund's portfolio.
An investor can attempt to select the general type of securities to be included in the investor's overall asset allocation by investing in a targeted fund that, for example, states it will invest exclusively in companies whose business is primarily computer software. But that selection still provides the manager of the selected fund with wide discretion to select from hundreds of securities.
In addition, except for a few targeted funds, it is not possible for the investor to express any preferences—even general ones—regarding matters such as social or moral issues (such as not wanting to, or only wanting to, invest in companies that engage in business with certain governments or have operations in certain sectors, such as defense). Even in those few instances where a targeted fund exists for those types of preferences, the preferences that the investor can have reflected are, at best, very general with the investor having no ability to select specific stocks, either to include or exclude, from the portfolio.
It is also not possible for the investor to control what specific securities a fund will hold in its portfolio, or with what weighting or amounts. Consequently, when the investor invests in a fund, the investor may be investing in securities in which the investor would otherwise prefer not to have an interest, or not as much of an interest. In addition, an investor that invests in multiple funds or that holds other investment securities other than solely one fund, will likely be overweighted or under weighted in particular industries or stocks frequently without his knowledge, and without any mechanism to correct the allocation.
Moreover, an investor investing in a specified derivative product, such as an option on the S&P 500, has no control over the selection of the stocks (beyond selecting a vehicle that will be reflective of the S&P 500), or their weighting, whatsoever.
2. Inability To Control Tax Effects
An investor in a fund receives capital income distributions at the discretion (subject to certain legal constraints), and depending on the management style, of the fund. Funds that chum portfolios generate more capital transactions than funds that do not, but the capital distributions are dependent on the fund's activities—not the investor's.
In most funds, such as typical open-end mutual funds (which account for the overwhelming bulk of all diversified investment vehicles with such funds holding a remarkable $4 trillion of investor money), tax effects “flow through” to the investor. In other words, an investor is saddled with whatever flow through tax effect the manager's activities have generated. The investor has no control over these effects whatsoever.
To attempt to avoid this problem, some investors with sufficiently large holdings to make it worthwhile can engage in complex tax strategies to obtain some flexibility, but those strategies are expensive to implement and not useful for smaller investors.
Alternatively, an investor can invest in a fund that attempts to limit the funds uncontrollable tax effects. For example, a fund that engages in no selection of stocks—such as an index fund or a fund that simply invests in the largest 500 or 1000 corporations—would have little turnover from a manager buying or selling securities in order to adjust the portfolio's holdings. Even in these funds, however, there are purchases and sales by the fund to reflect redemptions or cash contributions by investors. As more investors buy into the fund, the manager buys more of the specified securities. As redemptions occur, the manager sells some of the securities to obtain cash to pay to the fund holders who are redeeming their interests in the fund. Consequently, depending on whether there was a gain or loss on those transactions, holders in these funds, which are generally tax flow-through funds, will usually receive taxable gain or loss, regardless of their desire.
3. Inability To Manage Tax Effects
Invariably, some securities in a fund will have depreciated while the fund overall has appreciated (or vice-versa). It is not possible for the investor in a fund to make the choice to obtain a capital loss by selling depreciated securities or, conversely, if some assets have appreciated while the fund overall has depreciated, it is not possible for the investor to make the choice to obtain a capital gain by selling the appreciated assets. Those transactions in particular securities are made at the discretion of the fund manager for the fund as a whole and affect all investors in the fund.
In those few types of diversified investment vehicles where the tax effects do not flow through, the investor does not obtain any gain or loss from the appreciation or depreciation in the underlying assets. The investor can only sell part or all of his interest in the entire fund (or in the case of a derivative, sell part or all of his interest in the derivative), which will either result in a gain or a loss depending on whether the fund (or derivative) has appreciated or depreciated as a whole relative to the investor's tax basis in the fund.
In all instances, flow through or not, the investor cannot sell some of the securities in the fund (or that comprise part of the value of the derivative), and therefore has no ability to manage for his own benefit the tax effects that originate from the underlying securities in the fund.
4. Inability to Exercise Shareholder Rights or Rights Regarding Reinvestment or Distributions, Etc.
As noted, securities held in a fund are owned by the fund, not the investor who merely holds an interest in the fund (and in the case of derivative securities, there is no ownership interest in the underlying securities at all). Consequently, the investor in a fund has no right to vote the underlying securities, tender (or not tender) them in a takeover contest, elect to receive a reinvestment of dividends, elect to receive a dividend as stock instead of cash, exercise any preemptive rights, or otherwise exercise any other shareholder franchise or other shareholder right that may exist with regard to the securities held in the fund.
5. Inability to Modify or Control Costs
With funds, there are two types of charges: Charges levied upon an investor directly for buying, selling or holding interests in the fund, and charges levied against the fund for managing, advising and providing other services to the fund. Although an investor may be in a position to regulate to some degree the charges directly incurred, either by buying or selling less frequently, or by buying directly from a fund as opposed to through a broker or other intermediary (such as a bank or insurance company) that charges a fee or load, the investor cannot affect or control the charges levied against the fund. Those charges which frequently are based on a percentage of assets under management, are paid by the fund and serve to reduce the returns, or increase the losses, of the fund.
6. Inability to Make Intra Day Modifications
An investor in a fund can make only one investment decision—namely to buy or sell interests in the fund. Because of the structure of open-end mutual funds (the overwhelmingly dominant type of fund), that decision is effective only once per day. For example, an investor who believes the market is going down, or who believes it may be going down during the morning but then believes it is going up in the afternoon has no mechanism, through an open-end mutual fund, to buy based on intra-day prices. All open-end mutual funds are priced as of the close of business—in fact prices are available for such funds only once per day; and all investors—whether buying or selling and regardless of when their order was placed during the day—receive a price as of the close of business. This lack of pricing flexibility is an important consideration for some investors and one that forces them to use brokerage as opposed to mutual funds for their investing.
Certain funds other than open-end mutual funds, such as closed-end funds or some trusts, as well as derivative securities, do trade during the day and therefore can reflect intra-day price movements. Each of these other vehicles, however, has negative characteristics that have made them unpopular with investors, including relatively unchangeable, static portfolios, and they are not generally viewed as substitutes for an open-end mutual fund. In addition, in these vehicles as well, the investor buys or sells only an interest in the fund, not the securities owned by the fund.
7. Inability to Monitor and Control Risk Levels and “Styles” of Investing
An investor in a fund can receive historical information as to risk and returns for the fund. Mutual funds that are actively managed—as opposed to passively managed indexed funds or static portfolio trusts—are managed by individuals, and frequently by teams of individuals, making buy and sell decisions. When some of those individuals depart the fund, the “style” of investing of the fund may change. Even if those individual managers never leave, the market may present them with fewer or greater opportunities to buy or sell securities under a particular “style” than they had before. Or their views as to the market may change and with it their investment mix. Some investors in these funds accept these changes in style and direction and view that as part of what they are paying for with the management fee. Others, however, attempt to select funds based on the funds' supposed risk, sector of interest and other factors (including previous returns). It is not possible to control those factors in these funds in advance, however, unless the fund commits to a mechanical style of investing with extremely limited discretion—which is rare for an actively managed fund.
B. Chief Among the Structural Disadvantages Inherent in the Brokerage Service are:
1. Inability to Create a Diversified Portfolio on a Cost Effective Basis
Under portfolio theory, an investor should seek to create a diversified portfolio when investing. Diversification provides an investor with a similar return with lower risk, or a higher return with the same level of risk, as a non-diversified portfolio. Simply put, portfolio theory dictates that there is no advantage to an ordinary investor in holding a non-diversified portfolio of publicly-traded securities as opposed to a diversified portfolio. Nevertheless, few smaller investors are able to create a diversified portfolio. The obstacles to creating such a portfolio for the smaller investor have been the inability of the ordinary investor to be able to craft such a portfolio on his own, combined with the costs of engaging in the trading necessary to create and maintain such a portfolio, and the inability to consummate trades in small quantities needed to create such a portfolio. Consequently, most investors who have understood the benefits, or at least understood that there is a benefit, from diversification have turned to mutual funds. And that desire for diversification has been a primary factor in the explosive growth of such funds, notwithstanding all of the disadvantages of investing in mutual funds as described above.
Costs
The costs for an individual attempting to create and maintain a diversified portfolio stem, in part, from the cost of brokerage. An investor buys or sells individual securities by employing a broker. The broker purchases the selected securities for the investor directly or from a dealer or on an exchange. The costs to a retail investor of purchasing or selling a security are reflected in charges that fall generally into two categories. (For larger institutional orders there are other costs stemming, for example, from the market impact of the order itself—in other words the ability of the existence of a very large buy or sell order to affect the price at which the order will be effected by moving the applicable bid-ask quotes. Other systems (Optimark, ITG-Posit, noted below) have attempted to address this problem for these large institutional investors.)
The first are costs charged directly to the investor in the form of the broker's trading commission. The second are charges levied upon the transaction itself (in terms of a “mark up” or “spread”) between the cost at which the security was acquired by the dealer or the exchange specialist from another investor and the cost of the security as it is sold to the investor. This is a cost that frequently is “hidden” from investors: Investors do not always realize that there is, frequently, a spread even when they are being charged a commission. But it can be a significant cost—even exceeding by multiples the explicit commission charges.
Through technology, increased efficiencies and productivity, competition, etc., these costs have been decreasing over time. Nevertheless, all in all costs (including the mark-up or spread) are still on the order (for the deepest discount broker and for the smallest round-lot of 100 shares) of at least tens of dollars per security traded. Moreover, the current view is that the costs have reached a price floor, and without new systems for engaging in trading, such as the present invention, the costs will not be reduced much further.
To create and maintain a diversified portfolio of individual stocks, an investor would have to purchase at least twenty to fifty stocks, and be in a position to add to that securities portfolio on a proportionate basis as new dollars are received to make additional investments. In other words, an investor would first have to create a diversified portfolio by purchasing say fifty stocks, and then continue to purchase stocks in appropriate proportions with any additional amounts sought to be invested on, say, a monthly basis. Obviously, the basic brokerage costs—even employing the deepest discounted brokerage services—would be prohibitive for the ordinary investor. For example, to create and maintain a diversified portfolio, an investor seeking to invest $2,000 per month (a relatively high amount for the ordinary investor), would likely incur minimum brokerage costs for an initial fifty stock purchase of at least (and this would be optimistic) $500—or fully 25% of the initial invested amount. Such charges are obviously prohibitive.
(The best that an investor can do with $2,000 per month to invest would be to try to build such a portfolio for lower costs by buying one or two separate stocks each month and thereby, over a number of years, create a diversified portfolio. Such a strategy has a number of drawbacks as well as taking years to implement. An investor could also add to an already diversified portfolio for a lower cost by making subsequent monthly purchases of just one or two stocks. The drawbacks in terms of lack of flexibility, inability to modify the portfolio, etc.—all similar to the problems with a locked-in portfolio stemming from a mutual fund investment—exist with this strategy as well. Only with investments approaching $10,000 per month—a prohibitive level for most investors—could these costs even begin to be viewed as non-prohibitive on a recurring basis.
As a practical matter then, brokerage costs and constraints eliminate the possibility that the ordinary investor can create and maintain a diversified portfolio on his own, even were the investor to have the tools and skill to be able to do so.
Capability
In addition to prohibitive costs, ordinary investors possess neither the skills nor the tools necessary to create and maintain a diversified portfolio with desired risk-return characteristics. To create such a portfolio, an investor needs to understand risk as it is defined from the perspective of portfolio theory, and have the data and the mechanism for analyzing the data to employ the theory. That data then needs to be correctly employed in connection with a trading system to allow for the cost effective creation and maintenance of the portfolio. There is no brokerage (or other system) that deploys, uses and otherwise acts upon the necessary diversification information, combined with a trading system, so as to be accessible by an ordinary investor. There are, and have been a variety of systems (for example, Schwab One Source (www.schwab.com), Financial Engines (www.financialengines.com) and a new Microsoft site (http://beta.investor.com)) that provide advice to investors as to the creation of a portfolio of mutual funds based on, among other things, risk, style, performance, and ratings. These systems, however, are not designed to enable investors to purchase a portfolio of specific securities (as opposed to assisting in the purchase of specific mutual funds, with all the attendant disadvantages of holding mutual funds) in a cost effective manner, or hold fractional shares in securities (as opposed to interests in funds), or obtain any of the other advantages (described above) stemming from the ability to invest directly in securities as opposed to funds, all as discussed further below.
2. Inability to Purchase Small and Fractional Share Interests
It is possible to acquire small and fractional interests through specific dividend reinvestment plans direct from certain issuers. These plans, however, are run by selected issuers and have a number of significant limitations, including, for example, average pricing usually over the course of weeks or a month.
Purchasing or selling a security through an ordinary brokerage requires transactions to be effected in minimum units of whole numbers. In other words, an investor can purchase no less than 1 share of IBM or sell no less than 1 share of General Motors, and purchases or sales must be whole numbers such as 27 shares, as opposed to 27.437 shares. In addition, costs are frequently prohibitive for small transactions in a security (such as 1 or 2 shares) or even for transactions in less than a round lot (100 shares). An investor buying a round lot in the ordinary security trading between $20 and $40 would be buying at least $2,000 to $4,000 worth of the security. Buying 50 round lots to create a diversified portfolio requires a greater investment ($100,000 to $200,000) than most investors are able to make. As a specific example, then, an investor wishing to invest $150 per week could, through an ordinary brokerage, at best buy 7 shares of a $20 stock, or 3 shares of a $40 stock, invest the balance in cash, and wait for the next week to buy a different stock or more of the same stock.
3. Inability to Select Individual Securities Reflecting Preferences to Be Included Within a Diversified Portfolio
Using a broker, an individual obviously can select individual securities for purchase and sale. The brokerage system, however, does not provide a mechanism for readjusting an entire portfolio of holdings as a unified portfolio of investments. Consequently, most investors are likely to be overweighted in a particular security or sector because of the costs of reconfiguring their portfolio and an inability to determine the overall profile of the portfolio: even if the overall risk and other profile characteristics are determined, the investor would not be in a position to act to make the portfolio diversified because of the cost issue described above.
Moreover, brokerage facilities usually do not provide assistance to an investor regarding other factors related to a company, such as social, moral or political considerations that would affect the investors choice of whether to buy or sell the company's stock.
4. Inability to Obtain Superior Trade Executions
Brokers generally execute trades when received, thereby providing “immediate” executions. There are exceptions, however. For example, a trade can be a “limit” order meaning that it can be executed only at a specific price or better. Limit orders are generally executed immediately whenever the price reaches the limit. Trades can also be set for execution at the “open” or “close,” meaning the trade will be executed as part of the opening or closing call auction procedures, or upon the satisfaction of certain other conditions or at certain other times as the customer may specify.
As a general matter, under applicable regulatory requirements, customers are required to receive what is called “best execution.” But that execution may not be the best price they could have received if the execution system were different. There is frequently a trade-off between price and liquidity. If a customer seeks immediate execution, then the price may be somewhat less advantageous to the customer than if the customer is willing to wait. In addition, if the customer is willing to delay the attempt to execute the order until there are multiple other orders, then the customer could again obtain a better execution because there will be a greater concentration of order flow against which to try to match the order. A number of specialized brokers (and other trading systems) currently permit institutions to hold order flow and try to match the held orders at various times. In addition, many brokers send order flow to others, such as market makers or exchanges, who concentrate order flow so that purchases can be better matched against sales, thereby providing price improvement or better executions than might otherwise occur.
There are trading systems that attempt to obtain improved trading performance for their customers, but these systems serve exclusively as various forms of “matching” mechanisms (although sometimes with very complicated algorithms) that seek to match buy and sell orders. They hold order flow over time or in accordance with specified preferences, such as the Arizona Stock Exchange, which runs periodic call auctions; ITG-Posit, which operates a crossing system that matches buy and sell orders five times a day; and Optimark, which matches buy and sell orders according to various algorithms. In addition, these systems primarily cater to institutions and are not available to the individual investor. In any event, as described more fully below, they do not provide the missing capabilities discussed above.
5. Failure to Monitor Portfolio Based Tax Effects
Although brokers obviously could monitor the overall tax effects of a portfolio for their customers, they generally do not. The concept behind brokerage is usually the selection of individual stocks for purchase or sale, not the creation and maintenance of a diversified portfolio. Consequently, recordation of basis and monitoring gains and losses of securities—as components of a portfolio—would be unusual and is generally not available in most standard brokerage accounts. If a customer does obtain that advice, if it is available at all from the broker, it is usually expensive.
6. Failure to Assist in Exercise of Shareholder Rights
Similar to the problem with tax effects, brokerage is designed to provide assistance regarding individual security transactions, not other matters. Consequently, investors are forwarded materials such as proxy statements without any advice or direction from the broker.